Four vendors collaborated to create a miniature OPNFV developer’s lab in a box.

The Swedish software vendor Enea worked with ARM, Marvell, and PicoCluster to create the NFV PicoPod. The one-cubic-foot device acts as a data center on a desktop for NFV developers.

The creators of the NFV PicoPod want to accelerate the development of ARM-based network functions virtualization (NFV) software. The device is compliant with the OPNFV Pharos specification. It’s being demonstrated for the first time at the OPNFV Summit in Beijing this week.

OPNFV community members host 15 Pharos Labs around the globe. Enea hosts one of these labs in Kista, Sweden. The labs are used to test the OPNFV platform, and members of the open source group can use them to do continuous integration. Enea’s is the first ARM-based Pharos Lab.

The creators of the new NFV PicoPod say it is a great complement to a full Pharos Lab for certain aspects of NFV software development.

The NFV PicoPod consists of six Marvell developer boards powered by ARMv8-A chip architecture. The encasement from PicoCluster includes a power supply and a Marvell Ethernet switch. The system runs the latest OPNFV Danube software release for ARM, which has been integrated by Enea.

"Collaborating with ARM, Enea, and PicoCluster allowed us to create a compact and converged compute and networking modular system," said Michael Zimmerman, VP and GM of the networking group at Marvell, in a statement. "The transition to edge computing and networking force new modular configurations that can scale from 4 to 24 cores and beyond.”